LOUISVILLE -- Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems, the Louisville-based company designing and building the next-generation Dream Chaser spacecraft that aims to put American astronauts back into space, appears ready to take its orbital flight program to the next level by moving it into its own 50,000-square-foot building in the city.

The business unit of Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp. wants to move the guts and the operations of the high-profile space travel program to a vacant building at 315 CTC Boulevard, not far from its existing headquarters on Boxelder Street in the Colorado Technology Center.

"(The building) will be dedicated fully to the orbital space vehicle," Sierra Nevada Space Systems head Mark Sirangelo said Monday. "It will all come together in that building."

That includes moving the avionics systems, the labs, the software and the expertise necessary to build the Dream Chaser -- including hiring nearly 80 new high-wage workers -- to the new facility. The spacecraft will undergo autonomous drop tests at Edwards Air Force Base in California this spring and could make its first manned orbital flight in 2016.

Sierra Nevada hasn't yet signed a lease for the new location, but Sirangelo said a decision by the Louisville City Council on Monday night to approve a business assistance package to partially defray the $2.2 million cost of remodeling the building, once home to the company Inovonics, is helpful.

"We're very happy in Louisville and Boulder County and we'd like to expand our presence here," he said.

Alan Stern, associate vice president of the Boulder-based Southwest Research Institute, lauded the news about a dedicated facility for the Dream Chaser, which competes with several other spacecraft under development in the commercial space industry. Those include the Dragon space capsule from California-based SpaceX and the CST-100 capsule from Boeing.

Since NASA retired its space shuttle program last year, American astronauts have had to jockey for a seat on Russian Soyuz space capsules in order to reach the International Space Station -- at a price of $60 million a seat.

Louisville-based Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft during a captive-carry test performed in May at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield. (7News Denver)

"It's a positive step forward for Sierra Nevada and it's a positive step forward for Colorado aerospace -- and for the next step forward in the development of a commercial crew program," Stern said.

Sierra Nevada's expansion plan, Sirangelo said, comes as the result of NASA awarding the company $212.5 million in August to continue work on the Dream Chaser. At the time of the NASA announcement, Sirangelo said his company would immediately begin to "enhance employment."

The company says it expects to hire 79 people for the new building, bringing the total number of people working on the spacecraft to about 200 in a year's time. Most of those jobs would be high-paying -- averaging about $120,000 a year.

Sirangelo said the company already has made about 30 new hires since August. Sierra Nevada employs approximately 300 people in Louisville, where it also makes satellites and other space equipment.

Aaron DeJong, Louisville's economic development director, said the incentive package the City Council approved Monday will cost the city $28,000 in rebated construction use taxes and permit fees. But he said it's a small price to pay for bringing good-paying jobs to the city and keeping a marquee name such as Dream Chaser at the Colorado Technology Center.

"To have Louisville hitting national news because of a local company is good and we want to foster that relationship," he said. "After all, there are other aerospace hubs not too far away from here. This is one small way we can help."

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